Last week, I flew from London to Las Vegas for precisely one day.
The purpose was to get various stakeholders in the same room to begin executing the roadmap.
Ideally, the people in the room include the senior leader (whoever controls the budget), the implementation partners, and the community team. It also helps to have scheduled meetings with other key stakeholders (technical, legal, PR, marketing).
The value of these meetings is three-fold.
First, they build the social capital you need for the team to cooperate effectively with one another. Emails and calls can be misinterpreted, but it’s easier to assume good intent when you can hear someone’s tone of voice, body language, and learn how best to communicate with each other.
Second, it allows you to go through everything in detail. Sometimes obscure aspects of a project can trip you up if every single detail isn’t wireframed and confirmed in writing.
Third, it allows for immediate creative problem-solving. When people have flown or travelled to a meeting for a day, you typically get their full attention. People are engaged in figuring out solutions.
It’s not always cheap to do meetings like this, but they always pay off many times over. Even if you can’t get everyone in the room, it helps to bring as many people involved in the community together when you begin the process.
You can have a distributed team if you like but bring them together when the project begins.
